Raw notes from the SAPPHIRE press conference. Later I'll contextualize it so I am less of a mynah bird
Bill Wohl, VP of Communications, hosted a press conference that was open to the web and in-room press/bloggers for questions. This event combined ASUG (the user group) and SAPPHIRE; there are 290 partners at SAPPHIRE, twice as much as last year.
This year we are including bloggers, an increasingly important channel for news and insight. Many from the media also bloggers. We are taking a lead position in offering a program for bloggers. I encourage you to visit them at the Bloggers Corner and I'd like to officially welcome them.
Henning Kagermann, CEO
NetWeaver is being presented as a backbone of business. This differs from the traditional transaction backbone because of an emphasis on human collaboration and the ability to adapt composite applications to changing market needs. They believe they will realize the full potential of Enterprise SoA:
- 100% compliance
- adoption 5 times faster
- double productivity
- cut TCO in half
- speed of change 10 times faster
The Americas is the region with the highest level of user satisfaction. Highlights the success of NetWeaver: 31k installations of NetWeaver components, for all industries, with 400+ ISV products powered by NetWeaver and 300+ customers in the enterprise services achitectures program. Letting customers and partners build composite applications on top of our suite. Points to the case of Manchette innovating on their own. Common pattern of what partners want to achieve: move from product provider to solution provider. Flexibility for supplier and customer side.
Shai Agassi
Moving from silo applications to a complete suite. Through SoA can now resolve events that are not only across silos, but businesses. So the industry is moving to a complete suite. Our job is:
- ensure compliance
- consolidate the core
- optimize operational networks
- manage relationships
- enable new growth
- manage performance
Acquisition of Versa is becoming a suite for managing governance risk and compliance. Middle of next year they will have a single unified risk balance sheet for a company. Trying to simplify ERP, a new GUI and usability of the transactions within the client. Duet and these enhancements will help user satisfaction. Announcing the acquisition of Frictionless Commerce. Collaboration with Microsoft, Mendecino, is now Duet, the experience for lightweight usage embedded in the stream of work of a users, role and industry based contextual usage. A whole new user experience and the ability do deliver custom transactions to the desktop. BI Accelerator lets you take large collections of data and put them into a Google-like experience and provide a 100x price performance in the first 30 customers. Highlights the power of the Ecosystem, where every partner for the mentioned products promised last year delivered this year. Launched the Powered by NetWeaver Fund, a $125M early stage fund.
Leo Apotheker
People with the insight to excel, processes that respond to the pace of your business and infrastructure that leads to sustained cost reduction.
Bill McDermott, President and CEO of SAP Americas
Customers are telling us we need to be innovative, because innovative companies out perform. Need help positioning for change and growth, and realize there is an execution gap. CEO wants to grow, but the CIO is not positioned to deliver. 80% of IT budgets are tied up in managing the status quo. We all learned that best of breed may be best, but doesn't breed. Duet as a productivity advantage. CRM on demand to not only get the app, but grow in it's use, beyond contact info to get a 360 view of the customer. Analytics in the hands of a a knowledge worker. Knowing the customer, in the 28 industries, sizes and their processes comes from our investment in people the understand, support and provide post-sale value optimization. Culture makes and breaks companies, and our success is based on it's people power. Doubled the US workforce over the last few years and near zero voluntary turnover within the company.
Q&A excerpts
Shai on the NetWeaver Fund. $125 is from SAP. Will co-invest with venture firms. Won't be a specific firm at a given point in time. Similar time horizon as VCs, 7 yr return with one or two investments. Average investment size, "a nice chunk of change." But less than $5m.
Niel Robertson asks about low adoption rates. What percentage of users actually use SAP workflow?
Shai: A lot have adopted, but the quesiton is how many events are driven through the workflow. 2,000 events are exposable, but not all are driven through the system Duet gives a simple interactive way to expose the event and facilitate it. (Personally I think he ducked the question by changing the metric)
Vinni representing the blogger brother and sisterhood. Two questions: When Cheney was at Haliburton did he take you hunting? (the head of ASUG is at Haliburton) Where is SAP's investments into different industry functionality?
Apotheker: I've never been hunting. We don't have a specific industry announcement because it is a continuous investment across them. One example is what we have done for retail over the last 18 months has created an end-to-end solution.
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